A thought..

For quite some time I have gotten more into recycling and reducing waste. So I had a thought, maybe I could force myself to get into it more so I could share my findings.

Most people recycle but recycling is not as good as reducing, most plastics cannot be recreated at a decent quality without adding some new plastic to the mix, unlike paper and metals. In addition to that, plastic is created from a very limited resource and will take forever to decompose. Our recycling cart is always more full than the trash but I would really like to reduce both.

What I am best at is grocery shopping, while most people are delving into ingredients I am searching for the item with the least amount of packaging. Simon is very embarrassed to grocery shop with me, I bring my own canvas bags, and I don’t put my produce in plastic bags. I am going to wash it anyway so why waste the plastic? I am know he loves me shouting “you are killing my planet” across the store when I see him grab a plastic bag for something.

I really got inspired by an article in People several years ago about “The Zero Waste Family,” see her blog here. Bea's slogan is "Refuse, reduce, reuse, recylcle, rot, and only in that order" which I love! They have about a jar of waste a year, they buy used clothes, shop in bulk, compost and so on. Although I know there is no way in hell that will ever be me, I definitely get good tips. Everything they buy is of “real” material, wood, metal, paper/cloth, and glass… zero plastic. This has been our biggest struggle. I do buy my dish soap and laundry soap in boxes, I have yet to solve the personal product issue, they simply use castille soap for most everything but I am sorry I am not down.

Anyways what do people think? I am always reading blogs/facebook posts about eating healthy and organic, but very little about reducing/reusing and recycling. We all know how to eat healthy and could if we chose, I have found reducing waste a much bigger struggle, especially in this consumer driven materialistic world. I will continue to blog about random junk, but if I really take the effort and do some more research could others benefit?